Patrick Rothfuss on game design

[Phil]

Just watched a video of a post D&D session in which Rothfuss was a guest and about half way through he goes off on a rant about shitty story telling in video games starting with The Witcher. Some of you might find it interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_dg6...

[Darren]

The thing I've noticed about Rothfuss is he never says anything bad about authors he knows. But dead authors and strangers he tends to really savage.

[David H.]

Is that really a Rothfuss-only thing, Darren? I think a lot of folks are like that.

[Darren]

David wrote: "Is that really a Rothfuss-only thing, Darren? I think a lot of folks are like that."

I don't know. The contrast is pretty extreme.

[Brendan]

"Patrick Rothfuss advertises a game he writes for while trashing other games."

[Phil]

Brendan wrote: ""Patrick Rothfuss advertises a game he writes for while trashing other games.""

At least the others made fun of him for doing it.

[Trike]

He's also got a YouTube channel devoted to him playing Witcher. Life is too short to watch someone else play a video game for 50 hours, but if that floats your boat then he probably rants there, too.

I didn't think his comments on game design in the video linked in the OP were all that insightful. These are frequent complaints many gamers have about the medium. Since Fallout was borked for me and I could never leave the starting area, I never got to experience the great storytelling he talks about there.

I will say that two of the best stories I ever experienced in video games were in WarCraft III and the original Call of Duty. In WC3 the fall of Arthas was one of the best versions of that type of thing I've seen. Arthas is forced to make tough choices in order to save his people and in the process becomes completely corrupted by an ancient evil. And the OG CoD did a masterful and respectful job of relating a pared-down version of stories about the citizen soldiers of World War II. The deaths really meant something.

[Rick]

Is the 3rd book in the Kingkiller Chronicles out? No? Then why are we paying attention to Rothfuss?



(yes, this is posted a bit for reaction. But seriously, the man's written three books. In 10 years. And been feeding off that for the last 5 or so. Treating him as some demi-god of fantasy fiction is getting silly)

[Aaron]

Trike wrote: "I will say that two of the best stories I ever experienced in video games were in WarCraft III and the original Call of Duty. In WC3 the fall of Arthas was one of the best versions of that type of thing I've seen. Arthas is forced to make tough choices in order to save his people and in the process becomes completely corrupted by an ancient evil. And the OG CoD did a masterful and respectful job of relating a pared-down version of stories about the citizen soldiers of World War II. The deaths really meant something."

I feel the medium in WC3's case hurt the story a good bit, but yeah Arthas fall to the dark side is pretty much exactly what the prequels for Star Wars should of done and failed at miserably.

Also for shame mentioning good video game plots and not mentioning the holy grail of Spec Ops - The Line.

Though most of the time in game design you have to decide what you are trying to do, there are plenty of games with really good plots and stories that you can feel that was the starting point of the game was the story and the gameplay evolved around that. Others the starting point was the gameplay and the story is just a mechanism to carry you from 1 point to another. In games like the Witcher/Fallout/Elder Scrolls the focus is more on the world and the exploration of said world rather than the plot itself, and leads itself well to lots of effectively unconnected short stories, which I actually think the Witcher does quite well.